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Vanderbilt’s Newest Digital Learning Initiative
Sep. 19, 2012—By Derek Bruff, CFT Director This morning Vanderbilt announced a new partnership with the digital learning consortium Coursera. Coursera is an online platform for open-access, non-credit classes, available at no cost to participants. Such courses have been dubbed “MOOCs,” or massive open online courses, and Vanderbilt faculty will offer five such courses via Coursera this...
Wikis in University Teaching
Aug. 31, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I’m leading a brownbag conversation in the Department of Teaching and Learning today on the topic of wikis in university teaching. Below you’ll find the Prezi I’m using for my presentation. You can click the forward button to move through the Prezi, or use your mouse to pan and zoom...
Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking
Aug. 29, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I have a new guest post over on the CIRTL Network website describing my use of social bookmarking tools like Delicious and Diigo in my math courses. The post is titled “Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking.” Here’s an excerpt: As with the cryptography course, social bookmarking contributed to the...
Opportunities for Graduate Students in Digital Humanities
Aug. 27, 2012—The HASTAC Scholar program is a great opportunity for graduate students in the humanities with interests in the use of digital technologies in teaching and scholarship. The CFT will sponsor one of the four 2012-13 HASTAC Scholars, with our Scholar undertaking a survey of technology use by Vanderbilt graduate students in their teaching here on...
Please Take Out Your Cell Phones
Jul. 24, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I have a blog post on mobile learning (using mobile devices like phones and tablets in education) posted over on the CIRTL Network website today. Here’s an excerpt from the post, “Please Take Out Your Cell Phones.” My theory is that if all students are expected to do with their...
Remembering Jack Venable
Jul. 20, 2012—by Allison Pingree, former CFT Director (1998-2011) Jack Venable, who passed away earlier this week, was a true champion of the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. He oversaw its creation within the College of Arts and Science in 1986, and later its transformation into a university-wide resource. Jack hired me in the spring of 1998. From...
Student-Created Infographics and a Seated Poster Session: Two Experiments in Teaching Statistics
Jun. 4, 2012—by CFT Director Derek Bruff This past spring I taught Math 216, an introduction to statistics for engineering majors, for the fourth time in recent years. In order to make the course a bit more lively for me and for the students and to reflect the growing importance of visualization techniques in statistics, I added...
Two Talks: Digital Devices in the Classroom & Upper-Level Physics Reform
Apr. 24, 2012—by CFT director Derek Bruff Vanderbilt is part of the CIRTL Network, a 25-institution group of universities collaborating on the preparation of science, engineering, and math graduate students and post-docs for future teaching roles. One of the CIRTL Network programs is the CIRTL Network Exchange, in which a grad student from one CIRTL campus visits...
The Future of Educational Technology?
Apr. 23, 2012—by CFT Director Derek Bruff I’m currently serving on a committee tasked by the Chancellor to explore how the university can use digital technologies, particularly social media, to enhance our teaching, research, and service missions. Each committee member is taking a turn to share the current technology landscape at Vanderbilt as s/he sees it. My...
Student Learning on Display
Apr. 20, 2012—by CFT Director Derek Bruff Yesterday I attended the School of Engineering Senior Design Day and spoke with many of the students (including a few of my own) about their senior design projects. I was impressed by what these students have accomplished this year and with the perseverance they developed tackling unsolved, open-ended, and challenging...